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He was the only guy I trusted that could help me.
“Right,” I murmured. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I never should have come back.”
With that, I turned around and moved to open my car door. When I did, he spat, “You never should have left to begin with.”
I blinked my eyes and stumbled back as though I’d been physically assaulted. “What?”
“You heard me. With all that happened, you just picked up and left. You gave me your lame-ass apology that day you sat beside me, and then you got up, walked away, and never came back. I never thought you’d do that. If it was anybody else, I’d have expected it. Not from you. You were never the kind of girl who ran away from anything,” he declared, his voice harsh.
Sadly, I couldn’t dispute his words.
I hadn’t ever been that kind of girl. But once I knew the truth about how he felt, I couldn’t bring myself to stick around.
My hand was resting on the top of my open car door when I replied, “You’re right. But apart from my mom, there was nothing left here for me to run away from.”
At the same moment that hurt moved through his features and completely caught me off-guard, there was a bit of confusion there as well.
I figured I’d clarify things for him. “She was the only one who didn’t doubt my sorrow for one second. With all that came my way after what happened, I was determined to stick around for her. Because I believed that she wasn’t the only one who’d felt that way. Then I learned differently when you showed me you were just like everybody else.”
Something changed in his expression, but I didn’t wait around for him to respond. I was about ten seconds away from completely breaking down. If things had been different, I might not have cared that I cried in front of Jesse. In fact, I’d have probably hoped he’d wrap me up in his arms when I did.
But things weren’t different, and he had made it clear.
“It’s evident to me that you still hate me,” I said once I was behind the wheel of my vehicle.
With my parting shot, I closed my door, started the car, and drove away.
As usual, Jesse didn’t make an attempt to follow me.
What had I been thinking?
I was a fool to believe that Jesse would have been okay with seeing me. There was no good reason I had that indicated he would ever be in a place where he’d want me around him.
But it wasn’t more than a few seconds after I pulled out of the Harper Security Ops parking lot, driving away from Jesse, that I realized I probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car.
Despite knowing how he felt about me all those years ago, I’d managed to convince myself that going to him now wouldn’t be a bad idea. Why did I think that he’d see me and suddenly forget how much he hated me?
Desperation, maybe?
There was no other explanation I had for subjecting myself to what I just went through.
So many years. So much time.
I could feel the bitterness creeping in. Time was something else. I’d spent twelve years feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, crushed by the knowledge that there wasn’t a single person in the world besides my mother who cared about me. And Jesse had obviously spent twelve years relieved that I hadn’t been around.
Or had he?
On the one hand, it was clear that time had been kind to him. God, he was still as handsome as ever. And there was no question he was happy and successful in his career. I was willing to bet anything that he loved what he did.
But on the other hand, his words to me before I raced out of there had me questioning everything I thought I knew.
You never should have left to begin with.
What did he mean by that? Why would he say that?
There was no way he actually believed that I should have stayed in a place where everybody hated me. Maybe running away from it all was out of character for me back then, but how could he have been surprised that I did?
He had to know. He had to know just how difficult it was. Maybe he didn’t know everything I’d experienced from everyone in town following that awful day at the quarry, but there wasn’t a chance he didn’t know it was happening.
